memory_alphafandomcom-20200223-history
The Trek Not Taken
The Trek Not Taken or rather The Trek Not Taken; First Steps into the Digital Frontier is a approximately 15 minute documentary detailing the uses of filming the studio models for the first two season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as the possible use of the earliest CGI applications for some of its elements, which however never came to fruition. Background information As a "retailer exclusive" only, the feature was originally only available on the occasion of the TNG Season 3 Blu-ray release as a digital download through Best Buy's "CinemaNow" streaming media service, focusing on the visual effects (VFX) of the first two seasons. Actually, the footage was dismissed as inappropriate and stored away as archival property, never meant to be seen again. Yet 25 years later, when Value Added Material (VAM) Producer Robert Meyer Burnett was doing his research for the 2012 remastered The Next Generation project, he did stumble upon this footage, "I’ll tell you one of the things we’ve found that is pretty exciting – we haven’t used it yet – when The Next Generation was first talked about, they had to figure out how they were going to do the visual effects. There was talk at the time – this was just a couple of years after The Last Starfighter, when they did all those space visual effects – that there was talk about going all-CG. In 1987. Various effects houses did a sort of bake-off, where they were given some footage from Star Trek III to do transporters and phaser fire… then they were asked to do CG models of the Enterprise. So we have these tests that these various effects companies did of visual effects – what the visual effects would have looked like had they been all CG. Ultimately, they were a little, uh, crude – to say the least – so they opted not to go that route, and they opted to go with models and motion control, THANK GOD, but we have this footage, and we’re going to use it on one of the subsequent releases. We don’t know when, because it’s not season-specific, but it’s crazy to have! It’s just something that was on a tape, Angelo found a box with tapes in it, we looked at the tapes, and there was this footage. Roger and I...one of the great, fun things about this project is that we get these tapes, and we just look at each other like "Oh my god, no one’s ever looked at this stuff! Ever!" It might just be snippets, but even if we’ve got one shot of a Nagilum test...we try and use shots of everything we’ve got, but the Nagilum test, to me – having actor Earl Boen and all that – just being able to see, is great! Because it’s never shown up in books anywhere, and just to have it all..." Burnett eventually made good on his promise, though the footage was ultimately released to the general public in a way he did not quite envision. In the end the footage was presented by CBS Consumer Products to a small privileged audience on an extremely limited basis as the retailer exclusive only special feature, "The Trek Not Taken; First Steps into the Digital Frontier", of the 2013 TNG Season 3 Blu-ray release, therefore invoking the ire of the vast majority of fans and costumers, not able to access or even purchase the special feature. In Germany the special was made available for a limited time to all (German, Austrian, and Swiss only) costumers of their TNG Season 4 Blu-ray release, partly as compensation for its delayed release, though it too had to be separately downloaded at CBS's German home page, Star Trek.de, by redeeming a code customers acquired with their purchase. To customers anywhere else in the world, the special feature was never made available. Credits *Interviewees **Mike and Denise Okuda **Peter Lauritson **Gary Hutzel **Don Lee *Director **Roger Lay, Jr. *Producers **Roger Lay, Jr. **Robert Meyer Burnett *Production Consultants **Mike and Denise Okuda *Co-Producer **Kris Edwards *Field Producer **Eric Carnagey *Compositor/Colorist **Mike J. Nichols *Make-up Artist **Jean Bean *Post-Production Sound Re-Recording Mixer **Darren Barnett *Production Company **Urban Archipelago Films External link * Category:Documentaries